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Project management is all about planning, managing and influencing stakeholders, mitigating risks, communicating, controlling and so on to deliver outstanding business results. What all this generates is tons of information. So, if there is a better way to manage this deluge of notes, documents, web links, milestones, priorities, emails etc. one could actually find some time to think, plan, influence, prevent conflicts and manage relationships etc. towards delivering the said business results.

I actively look at minimizing tedious work to increase my productivity and deliver otherwise difficult to deliver results. As my other blogs would indicate software is one way out. With time one uses different tools and settles down on something for the slightly longer term till something better comes along. In this context I came across Mindjet, the mind mapping software. I manage many pieces of work and it is difficult to find one place to go to to pull up all necessary information and feel in control without being overwhelmed by the effort required to do so.

With Mindjet (www.mindjet.com) one can create topics, associate, tasks and subtasks with it, assign resources and timeline, attach time stamped notes, documents, hyperlinks, folders etc., almost endlessly. Then one can focus, filter and search relevant topics as well as get a gantt and list based view of the mind map. The free flow visual set up seems to be more comforting than a typical project database. One can also transfer content between Mindjet and excel, word, powerpoint, outlook (select emails, tasks, appointments etc) and microsoft project. Thus, you have everything in one place and time for clicking and searching comes down. The software also allows mind maps and tasks to be transferred to the cloud which can then be accessed via tablets and mobile phones.

I’ve so far enjoyed using the software though its slightly expensive and a bit buggy at times. Transferring items to derive an excel report could mean slight formatting work and rearrangement – this can be better addressed, though the word export is good. The latter includes export of notes and hyperlinks which is a definite plus. Additional capability to search through the attached and linked items would be fantastic.